Adele on Music Streaming: "It's Not the Only Way to Consume Music"

Adele also talked about her upcoming tour with 'TIME.'

adele time magazine cover

Image via TIME/Photograph by Erik Madigan Heck

adele time magazine cover

Adele's 25 is on its way to becoming one of the best-selling albums ever. Currently sitting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart for the fourth straight week, the album has sold 5.98 million copies. In an excerpt from her TIME cover story, Adele talked about keeping 25 off streaming services, if she would ever consider getting into acting, and her upcoming tour.

For the first time, Adele spoke on her controversial decision to keep 25 off streaming services. “I believe music should be an event,” she explained. “For me, all albums that come out, I’m excited about leading up to release day. I don’t use streaming. I buy my music. I download it, and I buy a physical [copy] just to make up for the fact that someone else somewhere isn’t. It’s a bit disposable, streaming." However, she did admit that streaming is where the music industry is heading. "I know that streaming music is the future, but it’s not the only way to consume music. I can’t pledge allegiance to something that I don’t know how I feel about yet.”

Adele shared her admiration for Taylor Swift as a comrade in her streaming decision. “I love her -- how powerful she is. We’ll get lumped together now because of it, but I think we would both feel the ability to say yes or no to things even if we weren’t successful.”

On another topic, the singer also said she would consider acting only if it meant working with Xavier Dolan, who directed her "Hello" video. "I have no interest in acting for the foreseeable future, at all, especially while I’m doing my music, because I can’t give my all into two things, but I would consider it for him. I liked how he made me feel when I was doing it. So I’d do it for him.” Interestingly enough, her name is currently on the IMDb page for Xavier's upcoming movie, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, starring Jessica Chastain and Kit Harrington.

You may have heard that Adele is going on tour soon. While Adele's Live In New York City special was a pretty tame, emotional affair, the singer promised more action at her upcoming shows. “I’m not just going to stand there! I really would like to fly through the arena for the beginning, but no one’s having it.” Hopefully, you were one of the lucky ones who got a ticket.

Latest in Music